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NEW YORK — "We who are about to die salute you.”

A wary Art Cashin heard this phrase in its original Latin — morituri te salutamus — from a fellow trader and student of the classics early on a day 20 years ago that would earn the ignoble title Black Monday and serve as a lesson about the fragility of rising stock markets.

Cashin and his colleagues recall Wall Street's plunge of Oct. 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones industrial average fell 508 points, or nearly 23 percent, as one of the most frightening days ever in the stock market.

Decades later, the crash helps put into perspective market drops seen more recently, including the 416-point, or more than 4 percent, skid in the Dow just this past February.

The Oct. 19 drop occurred when Wall Street faced many of the same conditions it faces today. The late summer months of 1987 saw stocks charging to fresh highs as well as an anemic dollar, rising oil prices, a weak housing sector and credit market jitters — all conditions that exist today.

John Phelan, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange at the time, recalled, "The market was just too high and it was looking for some excuse to react.”

Indeed, the Dow had been up 18.5 percent for the year the day before the crash and at its late-August peak had risen a staggering 43.6 percent for the year.

Some observers have made comparisons to this year, when the Dow crossed 13,000 for the first time and then in short order passed 14,000 as investors looked past growing concerns about tightening credit markets and a faltering housing sector.

But market watchers say there are important differences.

At the time the Federal Reserve was busy battling inflation, and interest rates were much higher, notes Liz Ann Sonders, now chief investment strategist at